BRIGHTON, BATH, AND DOVER ROADS. 243 



days to and from London and Marlborough, seventy-four and 

 a half miles hard work every day in the heat of summer and 

 the cold of winter. Bath by Devizes from Marlborough was 

 1 07 \ miles, but most of the coaches came through Chippenham 

 and Calne, no miles. The roads down from London parted 

 at Beckhampton on Marlborough Downs, the right-hand road 

 through Chippenham, the left-hand through Devizes. Old 

 Edwards drove in the morning from Bath to Marlborough and 

 back at night, thirty-one and a half miles each way, making 

 sixty-three miles a day by figures ; but ten miles each way over 

 Marlborough Downs was equal to twenty miles it was a 

 fearful road in the snow. We sometimes went by the Regu- 

 lator, half an hour later than the York House ; Isaac Johnson, 

 afterwards on the Quicksilver, Devonport mail (one of the 

 three brothers elsewhere mentioned), drove from Bristol to 

 Marlborough and back. Sometimes we came from London 

 by the Emerald, a green coach leaving London at three P.M. ; 

 the Regulator was a dark coach with red wheels,"^the York 

 House chocolate with yellow wheels. 



I omitted, whilst writing of the York House coach from 

 Bath, to state a circumstance which will give an idea to the 

 luxurious first-class railway traveller, now usually wrapped from 

 his chin to his toes in furs, of the discomfort in which people 

 travelled by public conveyances in former days. Coming 

 home once from Eton for the Christmas holidays in bitterly 

 cold weather with snow on the ground, I was so perished with 

 cold that, instead of going into the Pelican at Newbury, and 

 falling to on the excellent boiled or roast beef or mutton pro- 

 vided for the coach dinner, I ran to the saddler's and invested 

 twelve shillings in a large and thick horse-rug, and was much 

 laughed at for my pains, not only by my fellow- passengers, but 

 by my own family when I got home. However, that evening 

 coming over the Marlborough Downs between that town and 

 Calne I think I had the laugh on my side ; and after I got 

 home mackintosh soft white stuff having then just been in- 

 vented I made the village tailor cover my rug with the patent, 



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